This isn’t your grandfather’s long-bladed prairie windmill.

Almost whisper-quiet, the six-foot diameter Energy Ball V200 wind turbine looks like something out of the Howe art gallery: a gleaming silver orb of glass fiber polyester, composed of six blades fused at both ends. John Phillips recently applied for a permit to install an Energy Ball, anticipated to supply 9,000 kilowatt-hours of power annually to his Olga home, but the request was denied – based on a 25-foot height building restriction written into the 2006 Olga Hamlet Plan. The device is normally installed on a 35-foot pole or a rooftop.

“[The law] might as well be five feet, where we’re concerned,” said Ted Thomas, whose company Northwest Wind Power was hired to install the Energy Ball.

It’s not just the Olga Hamlet that doesn’t allow the alternative energy device: San Juan County senior planner Colin Maycock said a 35-foot height limit exists throughout the county, and in most cases that’s too low for wind devices to be effective.

“The language of the [land use] code is not necessarily conducive to letting [home based energy installations] go in,” said building official Rene Beliveau. “They are kind of silent about it, so it’s hard for us to figure out what people want.”

Lopezian Rick Strachan knows this all too well: he has the first – and only – legally permitted wind installation in the entire county. He said it took him over two years and $16,000 in permitting fees to get his 120-foot wind tower installed, even though he said the Lopez community largely supported the project. Strachan said when the permit department wanted to assess a permitting fee, “they couldn’t find a way to assess me because it didn’t fit anything they had on the books; they said, ‘we’ll pretend you’re a house’.” He was required to go through a SEPA process, and then obtain a conditional use permit.

“Unless these policies are changed, renewable energy in this county is going to be the province of rich people and outlaws, and that’s not good social policy,” said Strachan. He said wind turbines should ideally be 50 feet taller than any obstruction within 500 feet, and the main obstruction in the county, the timber line, tends to be around 125 feet high.

“The higher you go, the more efficient [a turbine] is going to be,” he said, because at higher altitudes wind is both faster and steadier. He said a 60-foot blanket height restriction across the county has been proposed, but said “60 feet is just nonsensical; that’s just a way of saying you can’t build them.”

Maycock and Rene Beliveau say land use codes could be re-written to be more friendly to wind power, but the task is not currently at the top of their priority list, ranking behind items like the critical areas ordinance update and the shoreline master plan.

“It wouldn’t be that hard to do,” said Maycock. “It just has to be put on the list of priorities,” which is determined by the county council.

“We’ll have to change our regulations to accommodate this,” said council member Howie Rosenfeld. “We’ve already had a discussion amongst ourselves that it’s something that we need to do.”

“We are actually actively looking at that right now; we understand there is not a uniform procedure within the county,” said Fralick. The council expects to choose its 2011 priorities soon at an upcoming Jan. 24 retreat session. Updating section 18 of the UDC to better accommodate small scale renewable energy installations is on the council’s Prioritized Planning Tasks, but not yet in the 2011 work plan of action.

While county councilmen Rosenfeld and Fralick both mentioned dealing with cell towers and wind towers collectively for regulatory purposes, Strachan said local citizens tend to look much more negatively on cell towers.

“It’s a very unfortunate tendency on the part of the county council and the building department to conflate the two types of towers,” he said.

Meanwhile, it seems islanders are becoming increasingly curious about wind power, based on the phone calls received lately by OPALCO energy services specialist Anne Bertino.

“People are really interested in wind out here,” she said.

OPALCO is interested, as well.

“We absolutely support renewable generation, and wind is one of them,” said Bertino. The utility recently signed a new 20-year contract with its supplier, Bonneville Power: OPALCO will pay a higher, market rate (Tier II) for every kilowatt-hour beyond a certain level of consumption.

“The more we adopt energy efficiency and conservation practices – including locally generated power – the more we could help keep rates at the lower, cost-based threshold (Tier I) for everyone,” said OPALCO communications specialist Suzanne Olson. “OPALCO does not expect to begin to incur Tier II charges until around 2014 or later. 2014 is a moving target that could be pushed back with greater energy efficiency throughout the co-op (member by member) and additional renewable generation. Energy efficiency and conservation are the least cost means of keeping rates and energy bills lower.”

OPALCO already has around 60 members generating their own local renewable power through solar and micro-hydro installations, supplying over 229,000 kilowatt hours per year. (Most homes use around 1,000 kilowatt hours per month).

A local organization, the Islands Energy Coalition, is trying to help encourage county decision makers to smooth the process for alternative energy installations. The coalition is chaired by Sandy Bishop, who is also executive director of the Lopez Community Land Trust. Strachan, also part of the coalition, contacted 38 other Washington state counties to research their alternative energy permitting strategies; based on his research, the group composed a model ordinance for the council to use as a guide in modifying existing land use codes.

“People here are very sensitive to what our environment looks like,” said Bishop. “We just want to know where and how, and what it looks like, and what the noise will be like. It is very forward-thinking of San Juan County to be putting this into their codes.”